oihfedfhorigiojisdeffandomcom-20200214-history
Jmjm
've switching back to Windows machine after using MacBook and Mac OS X for a bit more than 1 year -- finally I found out I love Windows and its UI more than Mac OS. So I'd like to share my experience of moving back to Windows. Initially I liked MacBook Air a lot - mainly, because of weight, 6 hours of battery time and its awesome keyboard. But definitely not because of software or UI. Actually, I though my opinion about software will change when I'll get used to it. But it didn't: *Mac OS seems less flexible in terms of automation of very typical tasks. Window (mis)alignment, no easy way to add keyboard shortcuts for apps / switching and absence of file manager comparable to Far with a dozen of plugins (or may be I couldn't get used to mc) are few of such issues. *I was constantly feeling Mac OS is much less customizable. The same is relevant for apps there. And this is really annoying... If a feature you look for absents on Windows, and it's not something totally bizarre, you can be certain there is a handful of tools or posts describing how to enable it. But this almost never works on Mac: I guess you might expect to find just 1 or 2 tools addressing your problem in the very best case. I suspect the feeling that I'm "contrained" was the main reason I wanted to migrate back to Windows. And very nice egonomics of MacBook Air was on the opposite side. So I found a nice replacement for MacBook Air in terms of ergonomics and made my bet. Shiny new Windows 8.1 hasn't disappointed me: the amount of absolutely necessary tweaks was surprisingly high. *It's awesome Microsoft added a taskbar option allowing to load desktop UI first. So far I use start screen only to launch apps and feel absolutely happy. *Metro Skype... Who designed it? Did they thought at all about users with keyboard and touchpad? And the most bizarre thing: it doesn't start automatically by default, and I guess only programmers can make it star automatically on logon (5 min. googling + 30 min. trying and discarding different approaches). I managed to do this. Did I tell you Windows is customizable? So this is the perfect example of why you want this, and why everyone hates this: finally I uninstalled damn Metro Skype and installed its Windows Desktop version (thanks god it's also available). *Tweaks for 13-inch Retina-like display on Windows push your brain to the limits. Most of desktop apps don't work well with high DPI displays. More precisely, you have two options: a) let Windows to scale up the low-res canvas provided for such app (so you loose all benefits of such a display), or b) disable upscaling and manually tune all the fonts in app, if it allows you to do this; but quite likely, you'll anyway need a microscope to to see labels. *What's really annoying is that one of such apps is Chrome... Imagine the irony: IE, Firefox, and I suspect even Safari - everyone supports high DPI, but not the browser I like. Google, are you kidding? I'm still using Chrome, but constantly think what other features there justify 4mm tall tab and bookmark lines :( But anyway, after certain amount of tuning and acceptance of my defeat with Chrome, I understood it's ready :) May be it sounds unbelievable, but despite all the issues, I feel can do more, and more importantly, do this faster. P.S. I've made an observation, that might be really offensive to Microsoft:when they launched Windows Mobile, they cloned desktop Windows experience there - likely, because it was simpler. Apple shown it was a huge mistake. It seems it was so painful that Microsoft still can't stop "fixing" it -- by pushing mobile UX to desktops and laptops. Doesn't this look like making the same mistake again? Metro UI works nicely on tablets (well, more or less), but I don't know anyone who likes it on desktops. So I don't understand how Microsoft justifies the fact they make users unhappy with the product. It's fine for me - I can tune it up... But if I'm the typical Windows user, this business is in great danger